


New Year, New Annoyance

by quiet__tiger



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Drama, Gen, Humor, New Year's Eve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 07:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10849611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiet__tiger/pseuds/quiet__tiger
Summary: Batman has to be the master at planning ahead. But sometimes even he can't predict everything.





	New Year, New Annoyance

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "The Best-Laid Plans."
> 
> Originally posted to Livejournal 5th-Jan-2012.

To the second.

Everything—people, tools, movements—everything—had to be visualized and planned out to the second.

It was the only way to get ahead.

And even that was often out of reach. Sometimes merely keeping up was a fulltime strategic nightmare.

And people wondered why Batman often seemed unpleasant. He didn’t necessarily _mean_ to be, it was just that all too often he was interrupted while trying to plan out how to take down the new gang, or the next step to block that drug deal, or anticipate what Joker, Two Face, Ivy, etcetera would do the next time they escaped from Arkham.

Always a next time.

Always a plan needed.

But he was Batman, and not only was having a plan expected, it always had to be—and often was—executed properly.

His reputation was built on it.

~*~

“An hour till the ball drops, Harley! Get going!”

“Sorry, Puddin’, just tryin’ to get my makeup right.”

“Your greasepaint isn’t going anywhere except all over our towels and pillow cases!”

“All right, all right.” She flounced out of the bedroom and did a spin to make her dress swirl. “You like it?”

Honestly Joker liked her in the red and black. The green seemed like it was mocking him. “You’re not supposed to be enjoying yourself anyway—we’re working tonight!”

“But it’s a party!”

“Where we’re gassing the guests! I’ve had it all planned for weeks. We sneak in, mingle, and then as everyone is watching the ball dropping on the big screen, we poison them all! It’ll ring in the New Year in a brand new unforgettable way!”

“And then we take the jewels, right?”

“Jewels, cash, credit cards, whatever you can. Any pictures you find in wallets and purses, too—you never know if we might need them!”

“You betcha!”

Joker and Harley had quite the evening planned to celebrate the end of the year.

~*~

_Go out or stay in._

_Go to Second Street or Second National Bank. Watch a movie or read a book._

_Crash the party or mug people as they came out half drunk. Rob the bank or case it. Twins or Double Dragon. A Tale of Two Cities or The Two Towers._

_Just him or with a gang. Violently or not. Sneakily or quickly. Pictures and watching or just walk by. Popcorn or no. A drink or no. VHS, DVD, or streaming. What version, annotated, abridged?_

Planning an evening could sometimes be a daunting task for Two Face. He better polish his coin—there was a lot of strategy to configure tonight.

~*~

“It’s okay, babies. I’m here again.”

As much as Ivy hated Joker, at least he was often compelled to spring her from Arkham whenever he needed Harley, so at least she benefited in that way from her friendship with the bouncy blonde.

And her garden desperately needed her. She’d finally had time to visit it after escaping, and her babies needed water and food and love. “Let me move some of you where you’ll get light tomorrow, and you over there need more soil. And you precious newborns need bigger pots already!”

Ivy rang in the new year surrounded by her family and organizing them all in the garden, and there was nowhere else she’d rather be.

Which was why Harley’s call was so very unwelcome.

~*~

“Red, what do you _mean_ you can’t help? But he’s hurt!”

Ivy’s voice was acidic even through the phone. “I don’t care. I have no doubt he brought it upon himself.”

“But how were we supposed to know Two Face would crash the party right as Mistah J was going to release the gas? He got caught in friendly fire!”

“Little with Harvey is actually friendly.”

This time Harley couldn’t hold back some of the hysteria. “You know what I mean!”

“At least Batman focused on capturing the greater threat at the time—which happened to be Two Face’s guns—and Joker got away.”

“…Yeah.” Harley looked over at Joker, who was paler than normal and bleeding all over his three-piece suit. “I guess that’s better than being taken back to Arkham.”

“Or one of Harvey’s bullets catching him a bit to the side. I saw on the news where it hit him.” Sniffing again, Harley thought about how close her Puddin’ had come to bleeding out all over the fancy waxed floor of the ballroom. Three inches to the left and he’d be a goner.

Overwhelmed with tears again, Harley pleaded, “Are you _sure_ you can’t come help?”

“What would I do?”

“Don’t you at least have something to help him with the pain? We haven’t had time to restock.”

“No. He deserves whatever he gets.”

“Red…” Harley added more pleading and more pathetic to her tone. “Please?”

There was a long pause until finally Ivy sighed. “I will help with the pain but I will also make him unconscious. And you and I will spend the night together the way we should have planned to anyway. Just us girls having fun. I’ll bring my plants, and you provide champagne.”

“You got it, Red!”

~*~

After a confusing night capturing Two Face and trying to find Joker before having to give up, Batman trudged into the shower. He cleaned off the grime—the first of the year—and was toweling dry when Alfred called out beyond the shower, “I saw on the news what happened. Such a strange pairing, Joker and Two Face. And Harley of course.”

“They weren’t together. Somehow they both crashed the same party at the same time.” Bruce pulled on his robe and left the shower to accept the offered tray with a sandwich and tea. “I had it all planned, Alfred. I knew Joker would hit my party—he has a knack for knocking over Bruce Wayne’s events, which I should look into more deeply—and I knew it would happen while the ball was dropping, and I knew how he’d do it, but he just took so long to get there that I couldn’t be in place, not while also playing my role at the party, and even still I would have gotten him before he did any damage if Two Face hadn’t suddenly appeared.”

After taking a big bite and swallowing, Bruce continued, “Just out of nowhere by himself, like he’d flipped that damn coin and it told him to go to a party and shoot people. So then I had to stop him instead of Joker, who got away in the confusion. I had it all figured out, and still I didn’t emerge victorious.”

Alfred raised an eyebrow. “I believe no one got hurt except the Joker. That is something to celebrate.”

“I suppose.” It was, but having Joker and Harley behind bars again would make him feel even better. “I just get frustrated when things don’t go according to plan. I have to always plan for every contingency with my actual plan, and then every possible impossible-to-predict problem that crops up in the middle. Short of unicorns or dragons dropping in, I have to be prepared.”

“There was that time with Mxyzptlk and the alternate--”

“Don’t remind me.” Wolfing down the rest of his sandwich—Bruce hadn’t had time to eat more than a handful of hors d'oeuvres and not the best ones at that—he sat down at his computer. “I need to figure out where Joker might be. He couldn’t have gotten far, not wounded, and I know Harley can’t tend to the wound by herself. How would she get help? Who could she call? She can’t just drop him at a hospital…”

~*~

Alfred watched as Bruce typed into his computer and scratched away with a pen into a notebook. No doubt he’d have Joker rounded up by dawn, and Harley too. As much as Bruce may feel defeated, deflated even, he never gave himself enough credit. The fact that there was always more to do and more to plan for was a given, but Bruce had always handled it well. He was almost always successful no matter what was thrown at him, plan or not.

If only he understood that and let himself relax. He couldn’t plan for everything, just what he knew. What he didn’t know, well. There was only so much one man—even the Batman—could do.

Alfred braved a squeeze of Bruce’s shoulder, and reminded him not to let his tea get cold. He also tried one more time. “You do well, Master Bruce. Unforeseen circumstances or not, you do the best you can. Don’t forget it.”

A grunt was the only response, and Alfred understood that. To someone used to planning everything out, even the surprises, to not have a plan work was extremely frustrating.

The only thing to do was study it, and learn, and do better next time.


End file.
